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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/05/australia-journey-time-travel
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| Australia can wait: why I’m against shorter journey times | Australia can wait: why I’m against shorter journey times |
| (about 11 hours later) | |
| The news that the British government is investing in a project that will cut the flight time from London to Sydney down to just four hours is a disaster for those of us who enjoy few things more than the solitude of a day’s passage to the other side of the world. | |
| There is no feeling quite like the particular isolation that comes from taking a long flight; and, despite the peculiar hardships, I enjoy it. That it takes only 24 hours to get to Australia is already a technological wonder, a deceptively fast trip that lulls the passenger into believing that the planet is a small, knowable place. | There is no feeling quite like the particular isolation that comes from taking a long flight; and, despite the peculiar hardships, I enjoy it. That it takes only 24 hours to get to Australia is already a technological wonder, a deceptively fast trip that lulls the passenger into believing that the planet is a small, knowable place. |
| The internet has already shortened the speed of communication, and jet technology now threatens to render travel implausibly quick. Make that route too quick, and our sense of perspective and our appreciation for the relentlessly vast planet would diminish. | The internet has already shortened the speed of communication, and jet technology now threatens to render travel implausibly quick. Make that route too quick, and our sense of perspective and our appreciation for the relentlessly vast planet would diminish. |
| Related: How safe is air travel really? | James Ball | Related: How safe is air travel really? | James Ball |
| As I make the final preparations to fly to Sydney in a few days’ time, it isn’t the in-flight entertainment, drinks or catering that hold an appeal, but the chance to watch the sun rise over mountain ranges, to stare at the inky blackness of oceans, to watch sunset over the clouds, and to enjoy the time to reflect on the tiny place I occupy in the world beneath me. Integral to that perspective is the time it takes: it should take longer to reach Newcastle in New South Wales than it does to reach Newcastle, England. | As I make the final preparations to fly to Sydney in a few days’ time, it isn’t the in-flight entertainment, drinks or catering that hold an appeal, but the chance to watch the sun rise over mountain ranges, to stare at the inky blackness of oceans, to watch sunset over the clouds, and to enjoy the time to reflect on the tiny place I occupy in the world beneath me. Integral to that perspective is the time it takes: it should take longer to reach Newcastle in New South Wales than it does to reach Newcastle, England. |
| It can feel like an arduous journey, but any hardship is a trivial fraction of what it would once have been to get from Britain to the lucky country. Of course technology has made the trip safe and achievable for many, but there comes a point at which the returns from ever faster travel diminish. That sense of distance, and of remove, are part of why countries such as Australia and New Zealand feel so special, so isolated and so different. | It can feel like an arduous journey, but any hardship is a trivial fraction of what it would once have been to get from Britain to the lucky country. Of course technology has made the trip safe and achievable for many, but there comes a point at which the returns from ever faster travel diminish. That sense of distance, and of remove, are part of why countries such as Australia and New Zealand feel so special, so isolated and so different. |
| Little bottles of bad wine, films distorted to fit a tiny LCD panel, the cold, dry air, the questionable food and the unreal sense of displacement are all unsettling, but some hardships are necessary to accompany the sense of achievement upon arrival. In the limited space of a metal tube tens of thousands of feet above the ground, there is the chance to disconnect from the demands of work, personal lives and social media. It is the space between departure and destination that is so crucial to abandoning the concerns of where you have come from and building expectation of the moment of arrival. It is a rare moment in life of enforced stasis. While you are travelling in a plane, you can go nowhere. | Little bottles of bad wine, films distorted to fit a tiny LCD panel, the cold, dry air, the questionable food and the unreal sense of displacement are all unsettling, but some hardships are necessary to accompany the sense of achievement upon arrival. In the limited space of a metal tube tens of thousands of feet above the ground, there is the chance to disconnect from the demands of work, personal lives and social media. It is the space between departure and destination that is so crucial to abandoning the concerns of where you have come from and building expectation of the moment of arrival. It is a rare moment in life of enforced stasis. While you are travelling in a plane, you can go nowhere. |
| Related: 48 hours in western Sydney: what to do, where to go | Related: 48 hours in western Sydney: what to do, where to go |
| What is the cost of shaving off some 20 hours of travel time? That sense of the epic, of the rare, and of the special would be lost from a trip to New Zealand if it were achievable in a long weekend. There should be places that are hard to get to, that are worth a long journey, that retain mystery and reward adventure. Just as the internet has made life so very fast, sometimes too fast, we shouldn’t rush to speed up the pace of everything we do, particularly crossing the globe. | What is the cost of shaving off some 20 hours of travel time? That sense of the epic, of the rare, and of the special would be lost from a trip to New Zealand if it were achievable in a long weekend. There should be places that are hard to get to, that are worth a long journey, that retain mystery and reward adventure. Just as the internet has made life so very fast, sometimes too fast, we shouldn’t rush to speed up the pace of everything we do, particularly crossing the globe. |
| We shouldn’t want to live in a world where we know the journey time to everywhere, but not the value of the journey, or a sense of the distance. A trip takes us, John Steinbeck wrote. And while air travel may rationally be safe, it feels dangerous. We are vaulted up into the air, enjoying a sense of vulnerability like no other – the plane a place to contemplate not just geography, but mortality. | We shouldn’t want to live in a world where we know the journey time to everywhere, but not the value of the journey, or a sense of the distance. A trip takes us, John Steinbeck wrote. And while air travel may rationally be safe, it feels dangerous. We are vaulted up into the air, enjoying a sense of vulnerability like no other – the plane a place to contemplate not just geography, but mortality. |
| Staring out of the window, watching the blue edge of the horizon fade into the blackness of space, a flight can be a necessary time for reflection, one of the rare times when we are awake but not distracted from the chance to sit and think. | Staring out of the window, watching the blue edge of the horizon fade into the blackness of space, a flight can be a necessary time for reflection, one of the rare times when we are awake but not distracted from the chance to sit and think. |
| Of course, there can be a pain to those distances. My family live in Sydney, and when I walk into the departure lounge at Kingsford Smith, I wonder how many more times I’ll ever see my grandparents, how much of my sisters’ lives I miss because they are the other side of the world. There is a cost to separation. | Of course, there can be a pain to those distances. My family live in Sydney, and when I walk into the departure lounge at Kingsford Smith, I wonder how many more times I’ll ever see my grandparents, how much of my sisters’ lives I miss because they are the other side of the world. There is a cost to separation. |
| For those lucky enough to have been to the other side of the planet, much of the uniqueness of those places might not survive the shortening of the trip. Some places need to be a long way away. For them to be special, we should want some destinations to remain distant. The time it takes to get there isn’t wasted. It can be some of the most valuable time there is. | For those lucky enough to have been to the other side of the planet, much of the uniqueness of those places might not survive the shortening of the trip. Some places need to be a long way away. For them to be special, we should want some destinations to remain distant. The time it takes to get there isn’t wasted. It can be some of the most valuable time there is. |
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